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This website covers knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints, amongst other topics. Opinions expressed here are strictly those of the owner, Jack Vinson, and those of the commenters.

Mar 28 rant: Gmail is great?

Okay, so I'm sitting here with my mother, who is attempting to learn how to deal with GMail, and I am flabbergasted at how unintuitive some of the interface is with it. This is particularly frustrating when so many people in the blogosphere rave over how great it is, including many who say how great is the UI.

Some examples. Note that many of these are things that may actually be possible, it's just that the user interface is not showing the way.

It's not possible to add a contact to a group while you are editing that contact's information.

When I execute an action on a selected item in a list (contacts, emails), the selection remains when the list is redrawn. I would have expected the list to be back to the unselected state.

On top of that, the "select all/none" option for lists is only at the bottom of the list. My mom's got the font set large, which means most lists require scrolling.

the edit box under my name, below "Contacts," says "Search, add or invite." Doesn't that sound like it should let me add a contact? Nope. I type in a new address and nothing. It doesn't offer me the option to ADD A CONTACT.

The "add contact" option on the left side is not for email. It's for the Google IM client. It doesn't let me add a new contact to my contact list. We wasted a bit of typing discovering that "feature."

It's possible to import from a text file. Good. It's possible to create groups of contacts. Good. Now, why can't I specify the Group in my text file and have Google understand that?

I'm sure one could go on. Others, who are much more qualified, have already done so: Dive into Mark, blog.hanfordlemoore. Of course, many more have ranted about what they like, including significant integration of keyboard shortcuts.

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This blog is about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and other topics. Opinions expressed here are strictly those of the owner, Jack Vinson, and those of the commenters.